Archive for Photos

I’ve never had a good system for managing my photographs. First it’s the matter of getting them off the camera and putting them somewhere. But since I’ve never had a good system there has always been a little nagging feeling that I’m going to lose track of all of them. So when I recently got a new laptop, I decided I needed to get my pictures organized. I decided to try Picasa since it’s a Google product and it meant one less password I need to remember. I was surprised how easy it was and even more surprised to find that within it are tools for easily sharing photos to my social networks. Here I’ve been a Luddite all along and didn’t know it. Anyway, the point of all of this is that I finally downloaded (uploaded? exported?) all my photos off my camera (1500!!) and can share some that I should shared eons ago.

I did the work on the final draft of Sleepwalk at a friends house. She set me up in style:

I don’t have many good photos from my reading at Busboys & Poets back in May (since my camera had gone AWOL) but here’s one with Fay Jacobs. We are listening to Lisa Gitlin read from her funny novel I Came Our for This?

And some random pictures that I find kinda cool:

These two guys remind me of a few characters in Scapegoat

The sky looking particularly dramatic as I headed out of DC one night

A tiny snake snug in the bark of a tree in my yard

A remembrance of the moment that I discovered a bottle of my favorite beer in the world priced for 1 dollar. I bought it.

George, one of the cutest dogs ever.

Scapegoat, long hand edits, looking atmospheric.

I like this shot because I think it’s a good representation of the way writers hope they will be visited by some kind of inspiration. A lot of people call it the Muse and though I don’t myself I can see why people do. Mainly because it is something that belies explanation. Sometimes it happens and the words come and sometimes they don’t. But it always feels really good when they do.

Yes, I am a bad blogger. But we already knew that. I truly have been swamped — or perhaps just swampy, like George in WAWW — now that I am in thick of writing RV2: This Time It’s Personal. The writing goes well some days, less so others. But that’s the way it is.

On a more positive note, I had a terrific time at the July 4th gathering at Proud Books. Thanks to Jocques and Fay Jacobs for arranging the reading. It was a great turnout. Here are a few photos — the super grainy one is from my new cell phone — I hadn’t fiddled with the settings yet — photo credit for the rest goes to the other writers:

Saturday in Orlando was by far the busiest day for me. I had a coffee chat and reading scheduled for the afternoon. Then off to a quick dinner and rushing to get ready for the awards reception. Phew!

I was nervous about the coffee chat since I haven’t had much experience “off-the-cuff”. But knowing I would be flanked by Tracey Richardson and Andi Marquette I knew it would be okay — that they would throw me a life line if I started to go down. We had a nice group in attendance who asked thoughtful questions about our work. A few photos. This one is practically an action shot — my hand is all ablur.

Andi making an aside to Tracey. Sorry about the leg, Trace!

After, I had to run off to my reading — I only have one shot of this and I look kind of funny in it so I will post it. I look sort of like, As the Hilton tilted and began to sink into the marshy Florida ground, she gripped the podium, gritted her teeth and continued with her reading. (Thanks to Margot for this one!):

That’s all for tonight — next up will be the awards reception and even some fun dancing shots!